The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution

(Draft Platform for the Proletarian Party)

A NEW TYPE OF STATE

EMERGING FROM OUR REVOLUTION

11.TheSoviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, Peasants’ and other
Deputies are not understood, not only in the sense that
their class significance, their role in theRussianrevolution, is not clear to the
majority. They are not understood also in the sense that
they constitute a new form or rather a newtype of
state.

Themost perfect, the most advanced type of bourgeois state is
theparliamentary democratic republic: power is vested
in parliament; the state machine, the apparatus and organ of
administration, is of the customary kind: the standing army, the
police, and the bureaucracy—which in practice is
undisplaceable, is privileged and standsabovethe
people.

Sincethe end of the nineteenth century, however, revolutionary
epochs have advanced ahighertype of democratic state,
a state which in certain respects, as Engels put it, ceases to
be a state, is “no longer a state in the proper sense of the
word”.[1]This is a state of the Paris Commune type, one in which a
standing army and police divorced from the people arereplacedby the direct arming of the people
themselves. It isthis featurethat constitutes the very
essence of the Commune, which has been so misrepresented and
slandered by the bourgeois writers, and to which has been
erroneously ascribed, among other things, the intention of
immediately “introducing” socialism.

Thisis the type of state which the Russian revolutionbeganto create in 1905 and in 1917. A Republic of
Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, Peasants’, and other Deputies,
united in an All-Russia Constituent Assembly of people’s
representatives or in a Council of Soviets, etc., is what isalready being realisedin our country now, at this
juncture. It is being realised by the initiative of the nation’s
millions, who are creating a democracy on their own,in
their own waywithout waiting until the Cadet professors
draft their legislative bills for a parliamentary bourgeois
republic, or until the pedants and routine-worshippers of
petty-bourgeois “Social-Democracy”, like Mr. Plekhanov or
Kautsky, stop distorting the Marxist teaching on the state.

Marxismdiffers from anarchism in that it recognises theneedfor a state and for state power in the period of
revolution in general, and in the period of transition from
capitalism to socialism in particular.

Marxismdiffers from the petty-bourgeois, opportunist
“Social-Democratism” of Plekhanov, Kautsky and Co. in that it
recognises that what is required during these two periods isnota state of the usual parliamentary bourgeois
republican type, but a state of the Paris Commune type.

Themain distinctions between a state of the latter type and the
old state are as follows.

Itis quite easy (as history proves) to revert from a
parliamentary bourgeois republic to a monarchy, for all the
machinery of oppression—the army, the police, and the
bureaucracy—is left intact. The Commune and the Sovietsmashthat machinery and do away with it.

Theparliamentary bourgeois republic hampers and stifles the
independent political life of themassestheir direct
participation in thedemocraticorganisation of the life
of the state from the bottom up. The opposite is the case with
the Soviets.

Thelatter reproduce the type of state which was being evolved
by the Paris Commune and which Marx described as “the political
form at last discovered under which to work out the economic
emancipation of
labour”.[2]

Weare usually told that the Russian people are not yet prepared
for the “introduction” of the Commune. This was the argument of
the serf-owners when they claimed that the peasants were not
prepared for emancipation. The Commune, i.e., the Soviets, does
not “introduce”, does not intend to “introduce”, and must not
introduceanyreforms which have not absolutely matured
both in economic reality and in the minds of the overwhelming
majority of the people. The deeper the economic collapse and the
crisis produced by the war, the more urgent becomes the need for
the most perfect political form, which willfacilitatethe healing of the terrible wounds inflicted
on mankind by the war. The less the organisational experience of
the Russian people, the more resolutely must weproceedto organisational development by thepeople
themselvesand not merely by the bourgeois politicians and
“well-placed” bureaucrats.

Thesooner we shed the old prejudices of pseudo-Marxism, a
Marxism falsified by Plekhanov, Kautsky and Co., the more
actively we set about helping the people to organise Soviets of
Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies everywhere and immediately, and
helping the latter to take lifein its entiretyunder
their control, and the longer Lvov and Co. delay the convocation
of the Constituent Assembly, the easier will it be for the
people (through the medium of the ConstituentAssembly, or
independently of it, if Lvov delays its convocation too long) to
cast their decision in favour of a republic of Soviets of
Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies. Errors in the new work of
organisational development by the people themselves are at first
inevitable; but it is better to make mistakes and go forward
than towaituntil the professors of law summoned by
Mr. Lvov draft their laws for the convocation of the Constituent
Assembly, for the perpetuation of the parliamentary bourgeois
republic and for the strangling of the Soviets of Workers’ and
Peasants’ Deputies.

Ifwe organise ourselves and conduct our propaganda skilfully,
not only the proletarians, but nine-tenths of the peasants will
be opposed to the restoration of the police, will be opposed to
an undisplaceable and privileged bureaucracy and to an army
divorced from the people. And that is all the new type of state
stands for.

12.Thesubstitution of a people’s militia for the police is a
reform that follows from the entire course of the revolution
and that is now being introduced in most parts of Russia. We
must explain to the people that in most of the bourgeois
revolutions of the usual type, this reform was always
extremely short-lived, and that the bourgeoisie—even the
most democratic and republican—restored the police of the
old, tsarist type, a police divorced from the people,
commanded by the bourgeoisie and capable of oppressing the
people in every way.

Thereis only one way topreventthe restoration of the
police, and that is to create a people’s militia and to fuse it
with the army (the standing army to be replaced by the arming of
the entire people). Service in this militia should extend to all
citizens of both sexes between the ages of fifteen and
sixty-five without exception, if these tentatively suggested age
limits may be taken as indicating the participation of
adolescents and old people. Capitalists must pay their workers,
servants, etc., for days devoted to public service in the
militia. Unless women are brought to take an independent part
not only in political life generally, but also in daily and
universal public service, it is no use talking about full and
stable democracy, let alone socialism. And such “police”
functions as care of the sick and ofhomeless children, food
inspection, etc., will never be satisfactorily discharged until
women are on an equal footing with men, not merely nominally but
in reality.

Thetasks which the proletariat must put before the people in
order to safeguard, consolidate and develop the revolution are
prevention of the restoration of the police and enlistment of
the organisational forces of the entire people in forming a
people’s militia.

[1][PLACEHOLDER.]

[2][PLACEHOLDER.]